BIOGRAPHY
Author of numerous non-fiction books since 1997, some written for publishers such as FT.com, Financial Times and Pearson, others commissioned by Xerox Europe, Ecademy UK, the Armenian Genocide Museum of America, in Washington DC, the Izmirlian Foundation and others written pro bono.
Born in February 1955, in Khartoum, Sudan to a successful Armenian businessman and a deputy headmistress, George as a child dreamt of being an actor. Convinced that he would starve as an actor, and ambitious to make his mark, George shifted gears and graduated with a BA in Business Studies from Bradford University in the UK in 1973. Over the next 20 years he worked in marketing in Africa, in England and in New Jersey. In 1991, after six years in the US and following a career menopause, George changed direction and embarked on an MA in Journalism at New York University, graduating in 1993, with a college EMMY award for his documentary, Emerging Airlines : The Kiwi Story.
On returning to London with a young family, George spent the next few years as a financial advisor and wrote his first book for his clients Seven Ages : Personal Financial Planning (1997). Soon after, he met an internet specialist, Thomas Power, with whom he teamed up to write The Battle of the Portals (1999) and Ecosystem : Living the 12 Principles of Networked Business (2001), the latter being translated into Chinese. Next came a commission from Lord James Lawler, CFO of Xerox Europe, to write Xerox Firestorm : A Fire Brand of the Future (2002).
In search of something different, George took a detour to focus on a political issue close to his heart: the Armenian Question. He next wrote a pioneering book, The Truth Will Set Us Free : Armenians and Turks Reconciled (2003), which was initially met with controversy and contention within the Armenian communities, especially in the United States. This controversy was mirrored in Turkey, when the book‘s Turkish publisher, Ragip Zarakolu, published the Turkish edition in the 2005, for which he continues to be prosecuted in the Turkish courts, long after Orhan Pamuk was acquitted for political reasons. Following the deaths of his father and younger brother, George set out to write about Arabkir, his ancestral hometown. He wrote the abridged version in English of Antranik Poladian‘s History of the Armenians of Arabkir (1969) for the Armenian Genocide Museum of America, which is entitled Arabkir : Homage to an Armenian Community (2005). His most recent book is Sarkis Izmirlian: A Biography (2008), which was commissioned by the Izmirlian family.
George lives in London with his wife and two daughters.